I have just deployed an updated version of the Struts 2 portlet archetype, which is based on Struts 2.1.1. The archetype also includes the jetty-pluto integration which should reduce the roundtrip from development to testing and running quite a lot.
To create a basic Struts 2 portlet with the archetype, run the command
mvn archetype:create
-DgroupId=<groupId>
-DartifactId=<artifactId>
-DarchetypeGroupId=org.apache.struts
-DarchetypeArtifactId=struts2-archetype-portlet
-DarchetypeVersion=2.1.1-SNAPSHOT
-DremoteRepositories=
http://people.apache.org/repo/m2-snapshot-repository
(all on one line)
Just replace <groupId> and <artifactId> with your real groupId and artifactId. Now you can just type mvn jetty:run -P pluto-embedded to run the portlet in pluto. The pluto-embedded profile does the magic of setting up the integration between the maven-jetty-plugin and pluto. To test it, just open a browser and point it to http://localhost:8080/<artifactId>/pluto/index.jsp
I have also included a class called JettyPlutoLauncher (you might recognize it from a previous entry) in the test sources of the generated project. It is simply a class with a main method that can be used to launch the portlet from your IDE. To use it with eclipse simply type mvn eclipse:eclipse -P pluto-embedded, import the project in Eclipse, and select to run the JettyPlutoLauncher class. Then open a browser to the same URL as described above.
This will hopefully get you up and running with Struts 2 portlet development pretty quick!